PART ONE

-1-

Casper hid in the shadow of an unmarked delivery van and used his Locko Loco decoder to work the door of a Brazilian luxury sportster while behind him on the AniLux coated facade of Polly's Pleasure Palace a fifty-foot-tall image of Hi-5, the megastar Queen of PornoPop, karate-chopped the air as she rhymed and used her world-renowned, singular appendage to impale a supermodel who dangled off her, defying gravity and giving credence to the widespread rumor that Hi-5's surgically grafted tool was of extraterrestrial origin.

It seemed like her Hi-ness was always there whenever Casper stole a car. That suited him fine because wherever she was doing one of her routines on the side of a building, people were watching her and not Casper.

Tonight, however, when the G.S.A. surveillance imaging team and their unmarked white van arrived in Baccha Bay City's Free Economic Zone, the FEZ, and began to scan the Ocho House, neo-hippie collective with high energy emissions, the first thing they noticed wasn't Hi-5. The first thing they noticed was that the FEZ was a very dangerous place to leave your car unattended.

Within five minutes of their arrival, a skinny kid in a hoodie strolled up, glanced left and right, and began working the locks on a hundred thousand Amero, Brazilian MotoVai sportster not more than a yard away. Goddie insurgents like Morituri and White Sunday were their focus, not auto-thieves, so they didn't bother to call local enforcement. They just laughed at Casper, cracked jokes about the impact of Baccha Bay City's cuts to educational funding, and warmed up their jumbo magnetrons for a gonad-zapping, high-energy, active scan of Ocho House.

While Casper's Locko Loco cycled through cryptographic sequences, he smoked Blue Dream sativa from a jade bowl and tried to look like the Brazilian sports car was his. Casper laughed because he knew that was ridiculous. The car was a hundred thousand Amero piece of sculpted, ultralight, automotive technology, and Casper was well-aware that he looked like a hood-rat with an overgrown crew cut and a busted AniLux hoodie.

The animated pulses of electricity and the sparks that were supposed to speed over the retro circuit board patterns printed on his hoodie barely moved at all now. If he leaned up against a bank of wireless power sockets, then he could get the electric blue sparks to move in slow motion once more, but unless it was unnaturally energized it was almost just a plain old inanimate garment now. Even if the motion coating was still working right, Casper was sure his jacket wasn't what the driver of this fine car would wear. People who drive cars like this MotoVai Sportster wear suits, he thought. Casper told himself he'd try to save some money so that he could buy one of those suits and maybe wear it to steal even nicer cars.

After Casper delivered the MotoVai to someone else who could find a buyer or strip it, he wouldn't make that much money, but he didn't steal cars for the money. Casper had found something he was good at, and though he'd never admit it, the feeling of being good at something was worth more to him than money. It made him feel like he was worth something himself.

The Locko Loco was taking longer than usual.

Casper took another pull off his jade bowl, felt himself relax, and leaned on the van. That's better, he thought. Now the decoder should work. Just a matter of attitude. Casper's hand brushed against the side of the van behind him, and he noticed the surface was warm, almost hot.

Casper felt his nads tingling. He stared down at the front of his jeans. His nads were the closest thing he had to a precognitive sense. Usually that tingle meant it was Time To Go.

Casper pressed his palm against the side of the van. Not only was it warm, it gave his palm pins and needles. He was about to explore this oddity with his other palm when he was shocked to see that the AniLux circuit patterns on his jacket were animated again. The blue sparks weren't just moving slowly, they were zipping ten times faster then they ever had when it was new. The animation was brighter than it had ever been before, too; the blue sparks were burning like little lightning bolts. Suddenly, the printed circuit patterns all lit up at once and Casper's hoodie flared bright in the darkness, drawing glances from clubbers lined-up across the street. Then his hoodie went completely dark, and the glowing blue mazes were all that his eyes could see.

He took another hit off his bowl to look inconspicuous – just another good citizen of Baccha Bay City getting high in the FEZ.

The Locko Loco beeped soft notes of success. When the gull-wing door opened, Casper grinned, put his hood up, and got in.

The surveillance techs had rolled in shits and giggles watching Casper stare at his zapped gonads and his radar-reanimated hoodie during the scan. They were considering calling local enforcement just to see what Casper did when they arrived, but then the human recognition systems found something so important inside the freshly-imaged Ocho House that everything on their consoles beeped and lit up at once. They forgot all about Casper Grey and thought about the promotions they might get for their discovery – an insurgent high up on the target of opportunity blacklist – one Alvin Dock Ellis, a.k.a. the Buddha.

As Casper and the MotoVai got away clean and drove away into the garish, pupil-contracting glitter of the FEZ, the G.S.A. surveillance imaging team received new orders straight from Director Delvaux's office – make no further scans, return to base, and make no reports.

When they returned to the G.S.A.'s Ziggurat, all three of them were given promotions with a double-grade pay boost, sent to supervise teams on different continents, and whisked off to their new jobs on high-speed transports within the hour. The underpaid surveillance technicians knew better than to ask questions, but they all suspected that very soon everybody inside Ocho House would be dead or wishing they were.